Friday, May 20, 2016

Book review: 101ways to flip your online class

101 ways to flip your online class by Barbi Honeycutt, PhD and Sarah Glova was the last book I read. I thought of writing a post on it since it connects smoothly with the topics I talk so much about now: flipped learning and online learning.

The book is rather simple. The author presents 101 short and concise ideas of how to "flip" an online classroom. In this particular book, the flip is understood as a space where student engagement and involvement is at the essence.

The 101 ideas are simple but effective. I had personally tried most of them in my own courses. Creating welcome videos, appealing to the person, introducing IMing and creating a course syllabus scavenger hunt for students to find crucial information about the course are just a few of the 101 ideas mentioned in the book.

However, the activities are not completely explained. The author mentions them but doesn't give much detail as to how they could be set up and implemented (a flaw in my opinion, I would have liked more detail in some of the activities). If you want more of a cookbook full of recipes, this is not quite the book for you.

Anyway, the book makes you reflect on how to construct interactive spaces within the online classroom and gives you ideas as to how to connect to your online students satisfactorily. Besides, it is a tremendously fast read.

If you are an online instructor who feels blocked about what to do in your course and want to get some quick tips on how to engage students further, this book is a great point of departure. However, if you are more of a flipped learning expert, or a "curious" online instructor, this book might be too basic for you. Anyhow, it is worth reading. I assure you, you will find at least 5 new ideas to take to your online classroom as soon as possible.

No comments:

Post a Comment